Short Wins – Forced Medication and Discovery Issues Edition

There’s a great diversity of cases where defendants won in the federal circuit’s last week.

Probably the most significant – in terms of it’s implication for other cases, is the discovery dispute in United States v. Muniz-Jaquez from the Ninth Circuit.

Though, of course, it’s still from the Ninth Circuit.

And there’s now interesting pro-defendant competency and forced medication law from the Fourth Circuit in United States v. Chatmon

To the victories!

1. United States v. Chatmon, Fourth Circuit: After he was indicted for conspiracy to distribute crack and heroin, appellant was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and deemed incompetent to go to trial. Later, the court granted the government’s motion to forcibly medicate appellant to restore him to competency. This was error because the court did not discuss any less intrusive alternatives in granting the motion. The order was vacated and the case remanded.

2. United States v. Malki, Second Circuit: After appellant was convicted of retaining classified documents without authorization and sentenced to 121 months in prison, he successfully appealed and was resentenced. At resentencing, the court erred by engaging in a de novo resentencing. Because the remand was for limited, not de novo, resentencing, the case was remanded again for resentencing.

3. United States v. Muniz-Jaquez, Ninth Circuit: Appellant was convicted of being a deported alien in the United States. The trial court abused its discretion in excluding dispatch tapes that could have assisted in appellant’s defense or could have helped him challenge adverse testimony at trial. Appellant’s conviction was reversed and the case remanded for the tapes to be produced and for the court to address any motions the tapes may generate.

4. United States v. Rothstein, Eleventh Circuit: Appellant, who was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme through his law firm, placed the fruits of his scheme into his firm’s bank accounts, where they were commingled with the firm’s receipts from legitimate clients. The court erred in ordering the forfeiture of some of the accounts as proceeds of the scheme because the commingled proceeds could not be divided without difficulty, and forfeiture should have been sought under substitute property provisions. Further, the court erred in forfeiting to the government other properties without resolving the issue of whether the illicit funds were used to acquire them. Remand was required to resolve that issue.

5. United States v. Windless, Fifth Circuit: Appellant knowingly failed to register as a sex offender and pled guilty to the same. He was sentenced to supervised release and two conditions were imposed: (1) participation in a mental health treatment program; and (2) no direct or indirect conduct with children under 18. The court erred in relying at sentencing on three “bare arrest records” – records that did not contain any information about the underlying facts or conduct that led to the arrest – in imposing the conditions. Also, the second condition was overly broad. For these reasons, the first condition was vacated and the second reversed, and the case remanded for resentencing.